Six goons had it circled. Goons with guns. Right away they spotted him. “There!” one yelled.
He squelched his impulse to run, fearing they’d shoot him in the back.
“Who are you? State your name!”
“Me?”
“Name, asshole!”
“Hugh Campbell.”
One man snatched the notebook from his hands. “Goddam it, are you a reporter? What are you doing here?”
“No no.” Hugh thought quickly. “I’m a birdwatcher. Chasing a rare … bird.”
The fellow smelled of greasepaint — brilliant emerald face. Neck a rare flank steak. “Give me your wallet.” The others closed ranks around him. Hugh noticed a welter of burns, some large, on faces, arms, hands.
Insects popped like Bingo balls in the fields. The men studied his credit cards. “You better be who you say you are,” the first one told him finally, waving his driver’s license. “What did you see?”
“Nothing, I … nothing. Really.”
Stale sweat. Beery breath. “Go back to the city, you hear? We kilt all the birds.”
They dropped his cards, his notebook and recorder on the ground. When he bent to pick them up, they kicked dirt in his eyes. “Get out of here!” the first fellow screamed.
As he fishtailed down the road, they peppered the air with lead.
Oaks gave way to willows, willows to chalky hardscrabble. Wind flung grit against his car.
In the thirties and forties, Alan Lomax, hitching through Mississippi to record rural folk tunes, was harassed for shaking black men’s hands in public, or calling them “mister.” One night on Beale Street, talking gospel with some harp players, he was startled by drawn pistols and a policeman’s twitchy flashlight.
So. Jim Crow was alive and well — and armed — in the Thicket too.
Past a rolling burdock-ridge Hugh glimpsed, for the first time today, swelling blue water, muscled ripples, worn-smooth stones. The Navasota. He’d found it. He’d found it!
Around a bend, smoke huffed from the brick chimney of an unpainted shack. A cardboard sign on the door advertised — simply, elegantly — “Hot Meat.” Two black kids, a boy and a girl, played on the porch. Hugh glanced at his map. He wasn’t sure after all. He’d ask directions inside.
At least this felt like the blues, not a Nazi rally.
A spicy-sweet sausage smell hung like a net in the trees. Up close, Hugh saw that the children were playing with half-dead crawfish. The girl’s dress was muddy and torn. The boy had messed his drawers. Hugh could smell it. Milky, dried oats crusted their mouths. No answer when he offered hello.
Inside, a big man and two women stared at him. He maneuvered around barrels and broken fruit crates to reach the front counter. His steps shook the walls. Somewhere, chicken sizzled.
“Howdy,” Hugh said.
The man nodded slightly. It occurred to Hugh they might think he was a militia mutt.
Carefully, he unfolded his map. “I’m looking for — ”
“Know nothin’,” said the man.
“I think I’m — ”
“Nothin’ ‘bout it.”
The women disappeared behind a thin green curtain.
“I see,” Hugh said. “Old juke joint, closed now? ‘The Honey Pot’? Near here?”
The man crossed his arms, resting his elbows on his belly.
“I just want to see it, that’s all.”
The only movement was a horsefly, dancing on rotting peaches in a bin.
Hugh stuffed the map in his pocket. “Is there somewhere I can get gas, then?”
‘“Bout six miles south.” The man pointed.
Back outside, Hugh saw the little boy pull the head off his crawfish.
A burned-out school bus sunk in an ivy-crush. A slender wooden cross, wrapped in roses.
He’d found the filling station. Another silent man.
The rest of the day he circled, reversed, tracked, and backtracked. The Thicket was aptly named.
The sky became a kaleidoscope, churning fury — by sundown, thick as taffy, purple and black, it filled the tops of the trees. Needling rain.
“Fuck it,” Hugh said, disgusted with himself, tossing his map out the window. It caught in the wind and skittered like a ghost through scissor-like leaves on the ground.
How could he have been so stupid?
Last year’s trip to the Delta, with its dreary fast-food joints, should have taught him that blues culture no longer existed. Spider was right.
And of course it never had been as romantic as in his fantasies. Slavery, for God’s sake. Sharecropping.
His cheeks burned. In spite of all his notes, his interviews and articles, he didn’t know a damn thing. How could he hope to know another race of people? It was hard enough to know Paula and Alice. His little girls. Himself.
He found a main road to the interstate. He didn’t want to think any more. He was starving. Up ahead he saw a truck stop, a glary all-night restaurant.
Before ordering, he asked the cashier to exchange several bills for a pocketful of change. He ducked into a smudgy phone booth by the kitchen. Lord, he was tired.
Alice had left a message at his home: “Hugh, hi. Sorry I’ve been so hard to reach. I was a little under the weather.” He was surprised how much her voice warmed his skin. “No. That’s not true.” He stiffened his spine. “The truth is, Saturday felt … too fast, somehow, I guess. I’m sorry. I needed time to think about what happened. Not just the sex”—this last word she whispered — “but the park, your world, what interests you.” Ah. So she did think he was crazy. “But I’ve been thinking about you, Hugh.” Yes? “I’d like to see you again too, if you haven’t lost all patience with me. So, I don’t know, I don’t know … give me a call, okay? I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
He smiled, cradled the receiver in his hands, brought it to his lips. He thought of his little glass skunk.
He fed the phone another clutch of coins, then punched Paula’s number. She answered right away.
“Hi. How’s everybody?” he asked.
“Oh God, what a week it’s going to be,” Paula said.
Her flustery tone depressed him right away. So much cooler than Alice, even when Alice was at her stiffest. “Can I speak to the girls?”
“Sure. Sure, hold on.”
Elissa. “Hi, Daddy.”
“How you doing, cookie?” Sweetness, home, he thought.
“Daddy, you know my friend Holly?”
“Yes?”
“She’s very vain.”
“Really?” He’d never heard her use this word. It was an adult word, complex and layered, and it sounded both funny and frightening in her voice.
“Today while we were playing? She wouldn’t take off her sweater, even though she was getting really hot.”
“I see. Was it windy where you were? It was a terrible afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. You want to talk to Jane now?” Clearly, for Elissa, Holly had been the day’s major business. There was nothing left to discuss.
Hugh wished the college ran half as efficiently as this.
“Daddy!” Jane said.
“How are you, pumpkin?”
“I bumped my arm on the door. I’m much more better now.”
“Good.”
“But I cried a little this morning.”
“I’m so sorry. Have you been practicing your play?”
“Sort of Some of the girls won’t learn their lines.”
“Hm. Can you be the director, then, and tell them how important it is to be prepared?”
“I guess.”
“You’d be really good at it.”
“Okay!”
“Okay, then. Sleep well tonight, honey. I love you. Kiss your sister for me.”